Dimethyl carbonate (DMC) is one of the most important derivatives of carbon dioxide. It is a new type of green chemical raw material, which can be widely used in solvents, gasoline additives, lithium-ion battery electrolytes, etc. Global demand exceeds 500,000 tons and the output value has reached US$391M. DMC is also a precursor of many high value-added chemicals such as PC, ADC, MDI, TMAH, TMD, etc. However, high-stability carbon dioxide causes the overall reaction rate to be slow, requiring high-performance catalysts to reduce the activation energy of the reaction. The heterogeneous catalytic reaction is a three-phase reaction of carbon dioxide (gaseous), alcohol (liquid) and catalyst (solid). Carbon dioxide and alcohol must be simultaneously adsorbed on the surface of the catalyst for the reaction to proceed. At present, the main catalysts are mostly cerium oxide (CeO2), zirconium oxide (ZrO2) or a mixture thereof. Although they have catalytic activity, their efficiency is not high. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new process to improve the reaction efficiency of the catalyst.
Currently, most of the improvement of the catalyst is made by using a metal additive and sintering together with the catalyst. However, since the synthesis reaction of DMC is a three-phase reaction and the catalyst is solid, the additive itself, due to the problem of dispersion, leads to limited effectiveness.